"Some don't know what a census is," the London grime artist Ghetts begins, "some do but they don't see the sense in it." Over a catchy hook and with a flashy video to accompany, his new track, "Invisible", seems to be part of the government's drive to persuade young people and ethnic minorities to fill in this year's national census population survey.

But there is a small fact they are failing to mention in the promotional material. In December 2008, the government quietly awarded the £150m contract to collect and securely handle the 2011 census data to Lockheed Martin, the second-largest arms manufacturer in the world. It makes bombs, bomber jets and has run most of the US military's intelligence gathering and interrogation, including at Guantánamo Bay, where it operated through subsidiary companies. Nice people to be doing business with.

Even if we ignore the fact that Lockheed Martin sits at No 1 on the Pogo Federal Contractor Misconduct database, with more than 50 alleged cases of corruption, fraud, bribery, environmental damage and discrimination, there's worse to come. As a US-owned company, under the post-9/11 USA Patriot Act, Lockheed Martin can be forced to hand over any private data in its possession to the US government and/or the CIA. It doesn't make the government's promises to keep our data safe sound quite so reassuring.

All this raises the question: was Ghetts fully aware of what he was getting himself into? It is difficult to envisage him being talked through the intricacies of the US military machine before the track was made. Surely if Lockheed Martin has been awarded such a huge contract to carry out the census, its name should be plastered across every song, poster and advertisement that encourages people to fill it in?

Even if we discount the possibility that Lockheed Martin could or would do anything untoward with our personal data, and even if we ignore accusations of the government selling on our census data to third parties in the past, the fact remains that £150m of taxpayers' money has been directly channelled into a company that profits from and enables war and destruction. That is unacceptable.

What the Ghetts track makes clear is that young people, those who have never filled in a census before, are the government's target audience. And the choice has been made clear: fill in the census, or you are breaking the law and could end up in prison. Or, as Ghetts rhymes: "Just remember this, if minorities don't fill in the form, what's the point of living in Britain at all?"

Surely all British citizens have a right to live here, regardless of whether or not they feel like giving Lockheed Martin and the British government their personal data? It would certainly be interesting to get Ghetts's side of the story: first, how much was he paid to make the song, and second, will he be filling in the part about the "names, sex and birth dates of any overnight guests"? I, for one, will certainly not.